Birds Nest Soup – Would You Eat This Cure-All Swiftlet Saliva?

The glitz, glamour, and shiny metal things, makes you feel more like you’re in a casino than a Bangkok restaurant. And with all the casing passing through the business, it might not be so different from a casino anyway.

Let me make the Birds Nest story short for you:

Little birds, tiny swiftlets to be more precise, build nests high up in caves near the sea. The nests are crafted with swiftlet saliva (that sometimes comes with little extra goodies like sticks and feathers), that’s discharged into a lattice weave, and then dries.
It takes weeks, but finally the proud result is a little concave, sort of a quarter of a sphere, miniature dish of bird saliva, or Birds Nest.
The Birds Nest then goes on to sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a few nests, depending on the many varieties and qualities.
Thailand, with its southern cliffs on the ocean, happens to be a pretty famous place for harvesting Birds Nest. So in that regard, Bangkok is one of the cheapest places to sample Birds Nest soup (at least a whole lot cheaper than in Hong Kong or New York City).
I won’t go into all the details, but eating Birds Nest is pretty much supposed to be a cure-all.
Burapa Birds Nest (บูรพารังนก เยาวราช) is a well known spot for a dose of Birds Nest soup (รังนก) in Chinatown Bangkok.
So I ordered the 2,000 THB per bowl of Birds Nest soup (รังนก). NOT. I got the second cheapest one available: 300 THB per bowl.
It came in a small white soup bowl, along with gingko nuts, a bit of high quality honey, and a soft boiled egg.
The Birds Nest soup (รังนก) is pretty much prepared just by adding hot water to the Birds Nest, bring it back to life from being hardened sticky saliva.
I’m hardly an expert at Birds Nesting, but I guess what you’re supposed to do is crack the egg into the soup before digging in.

Birds Nest Soup – Would You Eat This Cure-All Swiftlet Saliva?

How does it taste?

Actually it doesn’t really taste all that much, but if it’s alright for me to say, it does sort of taste, birdy.
The soup is sort of thick and a little slimy. And within the soup are little chunks of things that are gelatin like, but really don’t have much flavor. Occasionally you’ll get a little feather in your spoon!
After slurping down your slimy bowl of Birds Nest soup (รังนก), you’ll then have the opportunity to spend your life savings on a jar or box to take home.
Prices vary greatly, but I do know that you might need to hit the casino jackpot before you purchase some of the prize stock at Burapa.

Q&A - Questions and answers

What is the different between house nest and cave nest

Being the same bird species called Collocalia, house nest and cave nest have the same molecule structure, thus, it gives the same bioactive benefit. The only different is cave nest has some mineral from the cave stone. From the scientific research of mineral content, the only different of cave nest is that it contains much more magnesium than the house nest.

Cave nest is more expensive than house nest, why is that?

Cave nest is more expensive than house nest due to the concession fee of the cave nest and the collecting process. In the old time, there are no ‘houses’ available to birds so people can only find Birds Nest in the cave. Since hundreds of years, Collocalia starts to look for food in the inland and it has found a safer and calmer manmade ‘house’ to live in. They later developed the habits of living in the ‘house’. House nest is lower in height and is in an easier access position while cave nest is more difficult to collect due to the height and cave natural structure.

Are we stealing their nest?

The nest that was collected from each period was abandoned. There is no such thing as stealing the nest from the bird or killing the baby bird for its nest for the bird house. Each house nest would be checked before collecting due to the easier access. No one wants to kill the bird. In contrary, it is important to make sure the bird feel safe so that it will come back to live and lay the egg in the same place.

What is in the Birds Nest?

Collocalia eats insects and small animal from the forest on the mountain nearby or from tropical trees near the sea. With the modern day advanced technology and research conducted in the laboratory, it is now known that Birds Nest nutrition consists of carbohydrate, protein, minerals as many other food. But the difference is that 80% of Birds Nest contains Glycoprotein which is the bonded molecule of carbohydrate and protein linked together. It is this Glycoprotein, a natural water soluble molecule that has the natural bioactive benefit more than the normal protein alone.